Black Panther Pincushion

This week on Deck of the Week we return to the Marvel Champions core set. It's been two years since the game was announced so how do our core set heroes fare with the enhanced cardpool. First let's look at the original protect expert himself - Black Panther. I know Quicksilver and Drax are the current hotness with Protection decks but they don't hold a candle to this cat.

Audiocast link: https://mcm-podcast.com/2021/09/14/dotw-7-black-panther-protection/

The Basics

The goal of this deck is to deck Black Panther out with many upgrades and make defending fun. Typically defending is my least favorite part of Marvel Champions but with enough set-up and T'Challa's kit we can make it worthwhile. You want to get to the point where every turn you are defending and poking for 3. This offsets the opportunity cost of missing out on a basic attack. We can pump those numbers even higher in the ultimate pincushion combo!

Sharpen Your Claws

So how do we get there. It's going to take some set-up. You may have noticed that there are 15 upgrades in this deck. That's a lot of board state you can squeeze out of your deck. Ideally you want to be able to defend and take no damage so getting Armored Vest and Energy Barriers out is pretty key. If you can get those our and lay down a Electrostatic Armor and Dauntless you are now set up to absorb 3-4 damage attacks and poke back for 3. Keep in mind you'll need to keep yourself healthy so I suggest selecting Vibranium Suit as your opening upgrade to keep healing Black Panther as often as possible.

Ultimately. If you can get 3 Energy Barriers on the board, along with Armored Vest, Electrostatic Armor, and Dauntless you can defend against a 6 damage attack, take no damage and reflect 6 damage back at the villain. That's the cat's meow! To make it crazier, you can play Side Step instead of defending, and poke back for 7 while keeping your basic ability available!

Tips to Staying Dauntless

You are going to be defending a lot, so you have events like Desperate Defense to allow T'Challa to defend multiple attacks. I've chosen this over Indomitable because it increases your defense to help you keep Dauntless up and running.

You also have Momentum Shift and Vibranium Suit to keep up a steady flow of healing while in hero form!. Ultimately, you are going to rely on Honorary Avenger and Endurance this allows your heroes maximum to be 4 hit points above their starting total - so you can still take 4 points of damage and keep Dauntless online. This allows you to use life as a resource and activate the mentioned Vibranium Suit and Momentum Shifts.

Hot Swaps

I've already made a few swaps myself one right off the bat is to bring more copies of Desperate Defense. This trade is easy to make as the +2 DEF basically provides 2 healing without paying 3 true cost in resources.

+1 Desperate Defense -1 Momentum Shift

Multiplayer Deck Thinning Package - This is a bit more consistent than the original deck. You are doubling up on all your key upgrades and can always dump them onto a second player later in the game. You pay for this by removing momentuum shift and one of your double resources (this typically works out okay as you are replacing 3 2 cost cards with 1 cost ones).

-1 Dauntless +1 Electrostatic Armor +1 Endurance +1 Armored Vest -3 Momentuum Shift -1 Genius

Herding cats - this swap allows you a bit more threat control - you are really going to depend on staying at full health to trigger your cards so more mitigation is also provided.

+1 Desperate Defense +3 Hard to Ignore -1 Nerves of Steel -1 Energy -1 Starhawk -1 Downtime